Additionally, it can be reassuring for the journalist to have it on tape – even if you’re making notes and aren’t planning to transcribe the thing, you can fill gaps.

But it’s absolutely right that the problem is far wider than simply claiming not to have the means whereby…

???? here in the u.s., the thrift stores are full of cheap cassette recorders. cassette tapes are still available.

i have done interviews by handwritten notes and by tape recorder. regardless of medium, the story is ridiculous. i could sikiş come closer to reality purely by memory, then using ‘google’ to look up addison’s disease.

but then again, this incredible secret knowledge i have is why i am submitting things to scholarly journals, not the weekly.

It’s a piece of cake to record phone calls these days. Just download Skype, buy some credit, install either Pamela (PC) or Call Recorder (Mac), call the other person and hit record. Doesn’t matter if you’re calling their mobile, landline or another Skype account – you get a two channel recording of everything you say and everything they say. I tend to find that the quality is so much higher than trying to record a face-to-face interview that I’d rather do stuff over the phone these days.

There’s absolutely no reason not to record conversations nowadays. And if you’re ever being interviewed, ask them to do it on Skype, or ask to call them, and record it yourself. Or ask to respond to questions by email – it takes longer but it gives you the chance to think about what you’re saying.

Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.

However, at the same place (names withheld to protect the guilty), the MD (an editor and journo) didn’t want anyone recording their interviews, ostensibly because the written notes should be good enough to go on – which was odd because his shorthand was rubbish and he’d had to revert back to writing in longhand. He used to have a go at anyone he caught transcribing from a tape all the same, suggesting that they needed to become better journalists.

I still recorded everything and kept shorthand notes in case of mechanical failure and because they’re quicker to get through if you only need to transcribe part of the interview.

My broader thoughts on this are that it’s fairly common practice in some (not all) women’s magazines to embellish true life stories. The fault rarely lies with the individual journalist. (I don’t write for women’s mags myself, so this is based on conversations with freelancers who do write for them.) A lot of freelancers feel caught between an obligation of fairness to the case study and the desire of the magazine for a good story. I don’t really know what it’s like for staffers, except that once you start thinking embellishment is the “normal” way of going about things, then you forget your obligations to the facts.

About the recordings – I wasn’t trying to imply that recording equipment was expensive or complicated or anything, just that because (for some reason) most mags don’t provide that equipment, it becomes normal not to use it. Who wants to be the odd journo out, recording every phone interview?

BTW, an excellent piece by Nick Davies in today’s graun about the Jersey reporting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/14/comment-modern-media-jersey

I think the best advice for anyone who agrees to be interviewed for whatever purpose is to MAKE THEIR OWN RECORDING.

I meant what _I_ said, not what you quoted. A tape recording might well have captured accurately what I said, but notes might well not have. I don’t believe you deliberately meant to misquote me – but the point is that trimming the linguistic hedge “a cynic might suggest” changes the meaning from one of asserting that at least one journalist does this, to suggesting that a case could be made that at least one journalist does this.

For the record, I don’t think journalists – in general – use notes to make their work PCC-proof, but I suspect that it is a loophole that some journalists exploit. This may be deliberate and intentional (I suspect very rarely) or may be unintentional (rather common). Both a journalist’s memory of an interview and their interpretation of their notes will be biased by the way they interrogate their memory. Assessing the accuracy of one’s own memory is a remarkably difficult thing to do.

P.S. I accept entirely that just picking on the journalist – here or in other cases – is a tad unfair. The magazine has editorial responsibility and may well have mucked around with the content.

Additionally, it can be reassuring for the journalist to have it on tape – even if you’re making notes and aren’t planning to transcribe the thing, you can fill gaps.

But it’s absolutely right that the problem is far wider than simply claiming not to have the means whereby…

???? here in the u.s., the thrift stores are full of cheap cassette recorders. cassette tapes are still available.

i have done interviews by handwritten notes and by tape recorder. regardless of medium, the story is ridiculous. i could come closer to reality purely by memory, then using ‘google’ to look up addison’s disease.

but then again, this incredible secret knowledge i have is why i am submitting things to scholarly journals, not the weekly.

Not sure why it’s news that two sisters in Wales have Long QT syndrome – it’s not a new medical discovery or anything, or even a new diagnosis for the girls involved. But the media do seem to love this particular meme (a shock could KILL me!!!).

Again speaking from experience, most (but not all) freelancers do record interviews. If you can do shorthand, it is easier from a journo’s point of view, because you don’t have to spend lots of time transcribing.

What S says is absolutely right about the chain of people who can edit a story. Also, the pressure in women’s mags is to get a good story, so mags will often ask freelancers to source near-impossible case studies to fit the story, e.g. “I want a woman aged between 25 and 30 who tried to abort twins but one of them survived. And she must be good-looking.” That kind of thing.

Particularly at a weekly, the pressures of a weekly print-day – with a much smaller team than is available to a newspaper – contributes to the same ill-advised cock-ups as are made by newspapers.

But that’s by no means the sole cause – features journalists are unlikely to have any science or medical training or background. There’s commonly a bidding war with other weeklies to win the story from a news agency. Then you have to make sure you don’t get your ass-kicked for that £400 that was spent when you write an entirely accurate story, that turns out to be quite boring.

So, they make contemporaneous notes…but I’m very surprised that the conversation wasn’t recorded down the line, which is the usual practice…unless, I guess, you don’t want there to be evidence lying around…

And then they make a story out of the bare bones of fact, and by now they’re only working backwards from the cover-line that was written for the issue over a month ago.

But let’s not leave the blame with them, because even IF they read it back to the contributor (good practice) it will pass a features editor, deputy editor, sub editor, editor, senior sub, editor again… you get the picture.

And yes, somewhere in that chain, you would think someone would check that the fact they picked up from some dodgy depths of the internet, would get idiot checked.

What? I have a small, five-year-old, bottom-of-the-range MP3 player that could do it. It’s sitting in the draw next to me. Should I donate it to Woman’s Own?

Ossian, “I don’t believe in the supernatural… pixies, goblins, jesus, journalistic integrity”

Come, come now. What about our Ben? He’s pretty… integral.